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Water offers assurance to customers as toxic algae grows in lake supplying 40% of Northern Ireland

by Trevor Loveday

Northern Ireland Water has told its customers who are supplied from Lough Neagh that their water is safe to drink as fears grow over the record spread of toxic algae in Britain's largest lake.


Meanwhile mainstream news outlets have reported that direct contact with the lake water “is killing fish, birds and dogs.”


In a statement the company said: We can assure our customers that the water supplied from all our Water Treatment Works, which includes water abstracted from Lough Neagh, is safe to drink and use as normal.”

Lough Neagh supplies 40.7% of the drinking water within Northern Ireland.


The water company said: “Drinking water supplied from the water treatment works which use Lough Neagh as their raw water sources, are designed with the potential for algae to be present and robust treatment processes are in place to manage this effectively.”


The cause of growth of the algae was reported by the province’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs as including the excess nutrients from agricultural and waste water systems within the Lough Neagh catchment, combined with climate change and the associated weather patterns, with the very warm June, followed by the wet July and August to date.


A report in June 2023 from the Agri Food and Biosciences Institute published at the end June reported “record surface water temperatures at 21oC compared to the seasonal average over recent years of 15oC. It proposed that the growth-enhancing effect of this may have been exacerbated by zebra mussels – an invasive species that has proliferated in the lough since 2017. This filter feeding creature clarifies the water and allows sunlight to penetrate deeper and boost the growth of a blue-green algae.

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